Since her character was mysteriously and unceremoniously murdered in Kevin Can Wait, actress Erinn Hayes has stayed relatively quiet about her time playing the beloved sitcom character Donna Gable. The family matriarch was killed off in the summer of 2017 between Seasons One and Two, with CBS saying in a statement that the departure of Hayes was because of “the show going in a different creative direction.”

That direction was bringing back King of Queens Star Leah Remini to replace Hayes and complete the larger King of Queens Cinematic Universe, along with one of the most subversive murder mysteries in modern television history.

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After half a year of diligent digging into the disappearance of Donna Gable, the investigation took a major turn last week when Hayes herself reached out to this reporter on Twitter.

At 1:13 p.m. on March 27, Hayes tweeted me the following message.

I liked the tweet, followed her back, and within an hour I had a direct message from the actress.

While Hayes declined to be interviewed on the record, she has been following my investigation.

And recently, the actress has been speaking publicly about her departure from Kevin Can Wait while promoting her new Amazon series The Dangerous Book for Boys, produced by Bryan Cranston.

“They’re such different shows. One is a sitcom, it’s three jokes a page… You’re not diving into too much real emotion. And I had a wonderful time on that," Hayes told People. “And now I’m on this. This show is so true to life, and it’s… cinematic. The jokes can be the jokes and they come when they come, but it’s not like you gotta hit that thing.”

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What I find interesting, however, is that the subject material of her new show isn't as different as she makes it seem here. Hayes stars as Beth, a mourning widow who is raising her sons as a single parent. It would almost seem that Hayes’s new show is taking place in some sort of bizarre parallel universe in which Kevin died and she is raising the children on her own. I decided to watch the first episode of The Dangerous Book for Boys to see if there were any deeper connections that would help with my investigation.

The first five minutes of The Dangerous Book for Boys does more to delve into the mysterious death of Dad than Kevin Can Wait has done to address Donna’s disappearance in 20 episodes. The father in The Dangerous Book for Boys was an inventor who also has a suspicious twin brother who shows up for the first time in Episode One—surprising the kids, who at first think it’s their resurrected father. In one scene, this uncle is referred to as “Bizarro Dad,” which is a direct reference to the Bizarro World in DC Comics, which is an opposite and alternate universe. This seems to be a clear clue that points toward The Dangerous Books Book for Boys taking place in some sort of “bizarro” universe of the King of Queens Cinematic Universe.

Interestingly enough, the show revolves around the dad communicating with the kids from beyond the grave, giving them clues that directs them to the titular book, and a number of imaginative adventures. Rather than avoid the topics of death and grief, the family in The Dangerous Book for Boys actually sits down and directly discusses their feelings and their loss—again, the exact opposite from how Kevin Can Wait handles Donna’s mysterious passing with jokes about gym memberships.

It would seem Hayes is trying to tell us something with her post-Kevin Can Wait career, but what that is exactly, isn’t clear yet. For now, it’s good to see Hayes moving on from the tragedy of Kevin Can Wait to her own starring role as a fully developed character who actually has feelings like a real human.

But this does introduce a number of questions: Did Hayes's departure from Kevin Can Wait cause a rift in the King of Queens Cinematic Universe that created a parallel timeline in which Donna lives and Kevin dies? Why is it that none of the characters can explain her death on Kevin Can Wait? Will Beth's son on Dangerous Books, during one of his adventures, stumble across the universe in which Kevin Gable lives?

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